You have basicly 3 options. FPP, crazy camera that follows the character or hide/transparent walls. None of the options you posted will work because you need not only to see the character but also enemies and these coins you gather.

>> CruiserI am not using any existing framework (I am kind of developing mine).For the rendering, I use lwjgl (good guess >>ReBirth).I hope to re-use this framework for a small bomber man game later on.

>> ArchibaldWhat is FPP?Since there are several players that use the same screen, I can't use a rotating camera.The only thing I can do is making the camera to aim the center of the positions of the players (and eventually zoom accordingly).The hide/transparent wall idea is also an option: With some shaders, I can put a "glow of transparency" around the players.This might be an evolution. However, I want this game to be playable in slow computers -- therefore, I want the player to be able to disable the shaders and still be able to play.I don't see the problems with the two current solutions and the displaying of monsters or coins.

FPP - First Person Perspective (in the old times I would say "like Doom" but now I guess I should say "like Minecraft" )

You don't need shaders to make transparency/hidden walls, it was done ages before shaders were invented. The simplest solution would be to make half transparent several blocks that are in front of the character.

Ho yes I was really feeling like : "I already saw that, but I could not figure where..."

(Top right of the picture)

>>ArchibaldUsing a doom like camera would not allow to play in cooperation (unless you split the screen).All the game and the game play is designed to have an external camera.We don't need a new Infiniminer

How big the "fortress" will be? The one on the screen is very tiny, is it the final size? Or maybe the fortress can reach like 10 floors with roofs and everything? In such case making the outline won't work because you won't be able to find stairs inside the building.

Comparing with Age of Empires is not the best one, because AOE was 2D, while you have to deal with 3 dimensions. Plus there you moved hundreds of units so the exact position of a single one was of insignificant importance (the outline there was used to quickly count how many units you have in the area, you never had to care how many pixels away from the fire breathing monster your only character that absolutely can't die is).

Of course the feedback would be much easier and more accurate if we had a demo

I build a little something on your server ... although fullscreen doesn't seem to be toggle-able with F10 (unlike in Singleplayer (regarding which I already sent you an E-Mail (with my wrong E-Mail adress (but whatever (it's the gmx.at one))))).

I just tried your demo, it runs smooth and it's quite fun to build things

But I had a really hard time using the controls and the camera. The problem was that when your start touching the camera (rotating or zooming), then it doesn't follow your character anymore. It was really easy to have the character off screen. For the controls, the problem is that when you go up, the character always goes in the same direction, independently of the camera ... so it's easy to get to a situation where pressing up goes down, left goes right .. etcAnother thing for the controls: at the beginning it says "press button 1 to start" .. and it took some time for me to understand that button 1 is not the mouse button 1 but the G key

I also had a kind of little bug : when reaching the top of a stairs block without any other block after ( like if you build just a stair ), my character was going up and down very quickly, as if there was a collision problem.

Runs really smoothly, camera is really smooth tooNo obvious collision problems except for the trees.As it was said before, camera is pretty confusing as it is not linked to the character. You can press Up and go down, etc.. And when you zoom in and go in camera direction, you loose focus on him.Sounds promising, waiting for monsters !

Most of the bug have been corrected (except for the stair's one -- I'll deal with it tomorow).

I am trying a "occlusion wall see through" solution to display hidden players.

Here is a example of what I've got so far:

I will probably "smooth" the edges of the cut walls and add some semi-transparency.

Bonus:The pyramid (I don't know who did that, but that's pretty cool)

>>Eli DelventhalI don't have Mac, therefore it is difficult for me to debug the Mac applet.I was expected for lwjgl to work directly -- what a fool.If at some point you figure the solution, please tell me. Other wise, I'll ask a friend for a Mac.

I just love it! How do you drink a potion? I couldn't find how Also, why you no let us select 2 key layout at the begining? Or tell us from the start what key does what, so no need to go to the options or anything.Plus, I think the game needs or either remove the mouse at all and make the camara turn with us automatically to where we're facing or make it mouse + keyboard friendly, so you can attack, place/remove AND move the camara with the mouse AND walk around with keyboard (wasd is a must + any other you want).

So nice<3 I've paused at day 10, I will continue playing later! MMm in the night when the monsters spawn the game slow down a bit, I noticed it at day 8 or so. So much monsters maybe xD And i'm agree with _Al3x , a better controls would make it better. Keep it up

>>_Al3xTo buy potion (of any other stuff), you have to go close to the marchant (a little "buy" appears on his head), open the marchand menu (button 2), put the cursor on the potion (arrow), select it (button 1), validate the buy (button 1 again).To drink a potion that is in your inventory, you have to open the menu (button 2), but the cursor on it (arrows), select it (button 1), validate (button 1).Actually there is a tutorial at the beginning of the game, but it is easy to miss it.I might have to do a proper "tutorial mod" if a lot of people are confuse with that.The camera is a real problem for me now.In one hand, I want the game to be playable by several people on the same screen, on the other hand the game is a 3d game and players are not necessarily close together. I am still working on it.

>>davidllanos22The game is actually slowing be cause of the music.The music is encoded as ogg and I am using jorbis to decode it.During the transition of the day/night the music of the day fade and the music of the night grow.Therefore, for a few second, the two musics are decoded simultaneously -- and that is killing the performances (according to jorbis's devlopers).In the last version, I cut that out. The transition are a little hard, but there is no more lagging because of that.

>>ReBirthArg! At some poing of the day, the web server has a lot of visite (some other web site), it may be because of that.A stand-alone version of the game is now avalable.It has been test on windows 32, windows 64, linux 32, linux 64 and mac os x.You can download it on the game page http://shlum.wtfcontent.com/

java-gaming.org is not responsible for the content posted by its members, including references to external websites,
and other references that may or may not have a relation with our primarily
gaming and game production oriented community.
inquiries and complaints can be sent via email to the info‑account of the
company managing the website of java‑gaming.org